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TUCSON,
Ariz.—The Ya Basta/Enough campaign, a coalition of about 20 groups in
the Tucson area, “communities uniting to resist” Arizona’s racial-profiling
law, SB 1070, held a 24-hour vigil in front of the State Building in
downtown Tucson. The vigil began at 4 p.m. on July 28, the day before
the law was supposed to go into effect, and lasted until after 5 p.m.
on Thursday, July 29.
Many
people came and went during the 24 hours, but the total of all who
participated probably came to more than 2000, with a high point of
about 500 in the morning and afternoon of July 29, including about 50
day laborers who normally seek work in a “safe space” at the South Side
Presbyterian Church.
During
a speak-out and open-mike session at the vigil in the early evening of
July 28, Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Derechos Humanos organization,
a key component of the Ya Basta coalition, made some comments about the
court ruling by federal judge Susan Bolton. The ruling, embodied in a
nearly 40-page document, was issued just a few hours earlier on July 28
and temporarily enjoined the state of Arizona from implementing key
aspects of this racist law.
“Win
or lose, we had to be here,” Isabel Garcia explained. “We have been
announcing this protest for a month preceding July 29, and although
this is some kind of victory, it is only temporary. There will be
further court proceedings and appeals, and our fight is far from over,
so we had to be here to voice our determination to resist this racist
law and everything that led up to it.”
Analyzing
the ruling, Isabel Garcia continued: “The ruling says that the state of
Arizona cannot enact or implement immigration law. The federal
government has jurisdiction in that area. The state of Arizona has
tried to preempt authority that is exclusively federal.
“The
ruling also says that you cannot create a police state for people of
color. Without using the phrase ‘racial profiling,’ the judge made
clear that people of color would be unreasonably subjected to
harassment if the law were implemented. The ruling also says that there
cannot be criminalization of people without documents, and you cannot
criminalize someone for soliciting or offering work.”
However,
Isabel Garcia explained further, not all aspects of the judge’s ruling
are in favor of immigrant rights. “The judge did not issue an
injunction against the part of the law that threatens arrest for those
who, in the process of seeking work, ‘interfere with traffic.’ The
judge also left in place the part of the law that makes it a criminal
misdemeanor to ‘transport or harbor’ an undocumented
immigrant.”
The
judge did specify that she enjoined Arizona from implementing SB 1070
because there would be “irreparable damage” to those who did not at all
times carry with them proof of legal residence.
In
summing up, Isabel Garcia stressed once again: “Our work is not over.
We have a huge job ahead of us to educate the large numbers of the
ignorant public on immigration issues. It is time for a real dialogue
on these issues. We cannot accept the Obama and Schumer positions. In
his July 1 speech on immigration, Obama lectured immigrants for
supposedly not following the rules.
“But
immigrants have been ‘following the rules’—of the labor
market. For a century or more this country has invited low-wage foreign
workers to come and work jobs that others would not, such as fruit and
vegetable picking and work in slaughterhouses. We should be grateful to
the immigrants who have enriched this country with their labor.”
Isabel
Garcia also emphasized, “We have to stop the so-called ‘free trade’
agreements whose result is to force people to leave their own countries
and come to the U.S. looking for work.” (An estimated 6 million
maize-growers in Mexico were driven from their family farms and ejidos,
or cooperatives, because NAFTA allowed giant U.S. agribusiness
corporations, subsidized by the U.S. government, to flood the Mexican market
with low-price corn, and local growers were unable to compete.)”
“The
road to a real and positive change in immigration policy will be a long
one,” said Isabel Garcia in conclusion. “We must continue our
struggle!”
The
next morning, on July 29, Isabel Garcia was interviewed on the
independent radio and TV news hour “Democracy Now,” hosted by Amy
Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Goodman brought up the July 28 New York
Times news story on the increased number of deaths of migrants
trying to cross through the Arizona desert. Just in the past month of
July, 58 human remains of migrants were discovered in the inhospitable,
sparsely populated scrub-brush mountains and flatlands of the
Arizona-Sonora high desert region.
An
estimated 5000 such deaths have occurred since 1994, when NAFTA was
implemented and the current militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border
began. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez both observed that the number of
known migrant deaths in July is roughly the equivalent of the number of
Western occupation troops killed in Afghanistan that month.
In
her “Democracy Now” interview, Isabel Garcia also placed the right
emphasis on the importance and effectiveness of mass mobilization of
people in the streets.
“I
think that the Obama administration, the courts, and everybody are
political beings. They know what’s going on. They know that there’s
massive political pressure, economic pressure, including massive
historic mobilizations that have occurred in the state of Arizona.
National, international people have come in. So I think most definitely
there has been an impact on everybody involved, as we all know that
massive, you know, real major social change results after there is mass
mobilization in the streets and massive engagement by the population,
and that really guides politicians, guides other entities within our
system to do the right thing. And so, yes, I believe that the protests
have had a definite impact on everything that we are seeing….”
During
the late afternoon of July 29 (when this writer was no longer present)
some of the demonstrators in front of the State Building, who still
numbered around 500, occupied the intersection, through which a major
artery passes in downtown Tucson. The police allowed the blocking of
the intersection to go on for about an hour as rush hour traffic began
around 5 pm, but then the protesters’ presence in the intersection was
declared an “illegal assembly” and most were forced back onto the
sidewalk, pushed by bicycle police. In the process it was reported that
13 protesters were arrested.
Participants
in the Ya Basta campaign will be meeting the first week of August to
discuss next steps.
In
Phoenix on July 29 the turnout was only about 1000, by the estimate of
a trade-union friend who traveled with a caravan of 13 buses from Los
Angeles. The AFL-CIO County Federation in LA organized these buses,
bringing more than 500 people to Phoenix—an eight-hour drive due east.
The
relatively low numbers in Phoenix contrasted sharply with the 100,000
or more who came out on May 29, two months earlier. The July 29
demonstration came on a weekday—which would generally limit
participation—whereas the earlier one was on a Saturday.
Another
cause of the lower turn out on July 29 might have been the mistaken but
understandable feeling that the court injunction had removed the
urgency of the problem.
And
another factor might have been that the actions in Phoenix mainly
centered on civil disobedience, something that only the most committed
would want to be involved in. It’s likely that in most cases, the
thousands of families who came out on May 29 for a massive, legal,
peaceful demonstration could not afford to risk being arrested on July
29.
Accounts
of the Phoenix actions, where more than 80 arrests occurred, may be
found on the July 30 edition of “Democracy Now” on the internet at
<democracynow.org> and on the website <altoarizona.com>.
SB
1070 protests took place all around the U.S. and internationally (see
the accompanying article by Lisa Luinenburg.) Of particular interest
was the demonstration in New York City on July 29, where hundreds
marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in solidarity with the resistance in
Arizona. Among the organizers of that demonstration was Monami Maulik,
the leader of a South Asian immigrant group called Desis Rising Up and
Moving (DRUM). On the previous weekend Monami had chaired the
immigration workshop at the United National Antiwar Conference in
Albany, N.Y.
She
was quoted as follows on “Democracy Now” on July 29: “Whatever happens
in Arizona, those same anti-immigrant policies find their way up all
throughout the United States. For the last 10 years, Arizona has been a
testing ground for the harshest anti-immigrant policies. And so, for
example, the governor of New York State has already signed on to the
Secure Communities program in New York, which has not yet gone into
effect, but will, and when it does, it will funnel thousands more into
deportation.
“Just
across the river [in New Jersey], the governor has signed on to the
287(g) program, authorizing police officers to arrest people based on
immigration status. So, we feel that Arizona, maybe that law is not
happening here, but there are many other harsh anti-immigrant
deportation provisions that our communities are feeling right here in
New York City and nearby areas.”
Participants
in the immigration workshop at the Albany conference agreed that they
should take part in the Oct. 2 March on Washington called by the NAACP,
AFL-CIO, and the New York Hospital Workers SEIU Local 1199. But while
participating they would raise the demand for a real debate on
immigration, looking at the root causes and changing foreign policies
like NAFTA that force people to migrate. And they would reject the
enforcement-only policies advocated by the Obama administration and
figures like Sen. Schumer of New York, which focus on “national
security” and militarization.
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